


Only Breathing With the Aid of Denial

by Feeling_Super_Super_Super



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Other, Racism, as of first appearances katara is 25; azula is 19; zuko is 22; toph is 12, just to establish that i haven’t forgotten about them, katara is a lawyer, ozai is the CEO of an oil company, the other characters are mentioned but like. only for a chapter, themes include:, this fic is dark, toph and zuko are private investigators, toph is blind and zuko is her aide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26840200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feeling_Super_Super_Super/pseuds/Feeling_Super_Super_Super
Summary: Wanting to get away from the gloom of her village after her mother's murder by police, Katara moved to America and trained to become a lawyer. Now, under the *very* lax supervision of her advisor Bumi, she's been assigned her first ever case, and it's a big one.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Azula/Katara (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Toph & Zuko (Avatar), extremely background Aang/Sokka/Suki, implied past one-sided Azula/Ty Lee
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	1. So Katara Dropped Her Shotgun

**Author's Note:**

> aight so this is new fic number 9, and this one is one where i'm planning to actually finish a set number of chapters and have a conclusion, rather than my usual modus operandi of continuing indefinitely, i.e. until i lose motivation and start a new fic. i haven't finished the plan yet just bc i wanted to get the first chapter out (i have two written atm) but i think i'm gonna have about 15 chapters. hopefully with an actual plan and set length, i'll be able to keep my motivation long enough to finish this one uwu  
> as i mentioned in And They Were Teammates, this fic is gonna touch - more heavily than in that fic - on themes involving race and mental illness, and they will be from a perspective i have not lived through. this means i may get stuff wrong, and i'd like you to help me improve and correct myself if i do.  
> one thing i've already noticed is that atla is really quite difficult because so few characters have surnames, and i don't know enough about any east asian cultures' naming conventions to be able to think of good ones for them (this is especially a problem for Katara, because the water tribes are based on Inuit culture which didn't have a cultural concept of surnames until europeans forced them to). i've gone for Inazuma for Azula, Zuko and Ozai which google translate tells me means lightning, and i haven't needed one for katara yet but i kinda like Aqillutaq which according to behindthename means "new snow". however, i don't trust either of those sources very far at all, and if anyone has better suggestions or can point me to an accepted fanon surname for any of them i'd be very very grateful uwu

Katara straightened out the frustratingly tight, frustratingly ugly skirt all female employees were “mandated” to wear during official visits. She chased away the rest of that half-formed tirade and forced herself to focus on the actual issue she was here for. Come on, Katara, she thought, this is your first actual case – kinda – and you’re thinking about dress codes? Save the feminism for if there’s an all-male jury or the judge blames the defendant’s period or some other bullshit. For now, it’s game time.

Katara had visited prison a couple of times, early in the second year of her course. Not this one, though. This one, a far higher-security compound ominously called the Boiling Rock Institute, was worse than her first impressions: the walls were nearly fifteen feet thick and made of something much stronger-looking than bricks; she had been stopped by no fewer than three pairs of armed guards and searched by two of them on the way in; and as she walked through the grimy corridors of the prison itself, she found plenty more to add to that list. For example, the fact that there were an average of three inmates in a cell smaller than her one-person bedroom back at home. Or the fact that, when the route afforded her a peek through the bathroom door, she observed a single tampon dispenser for an entire corridor’s worth of women – which looked to be half-empty in the middle of the day on a Tuesday afternoon, and she dreaded to wonder how often someone came in to replace them.

In any case, this place looked bad. She’d done the usual background checks Bumi, her advisor and a moderately successful retired human rights lawyer, had recommended: demographics of the prison’s recent inmates, obtained with a handy warrant thanks to her client’s status as an ethnic minority, showed an unsurprising racial bias in the usual directions, Katara had observed with a grim expression. And there was a nasty lawsuit a few years ago involving some guards who took their commanding officer’s order to “do what you will” quite a bit too literally during an interrogation. Long story short, as she quietly looked at the guards escorting her, Katara didn’t regret her decision to sneak a switchblade and a canister of pepper spray in the fold of her hoodie on the way in.

Between focusing on her first meeting with her first client and noting down all the things she’d like to file a complaint or a lawsuit about, Katara was lost in thought, and it wasn’t until they reached the correct cell, a rare single-person bedroom with an adjoining bathroom, that she was abruptly shocked awake by the sudden stop of the guards. After the guard on the left unlocked the door he nodded to the other, and they moved forward together into the dark room, hands on batons. Katara stood awkwardly outside trying to pretend she couldn’t hear the sound of threatening whispers in the guards’ voices, and then, when that failed, resorted to concentrating on the notes she’d written up into flashcards to prepare what she was going to say to the inmate she was about to try and defend.

As soon as they came back they nodded to her, as though she were supposed to thank them for their brave service, she thought. One of them – she thought the one who had unlocked the door, though with their identical uniform, buzzcut and arrogant swagger it was hard to tell them apart –said, “We’ve made sure she’s safe for you to come in, Mademoiselle,” and hammered the point home with a wink and a horrible smug smirk. The other guard chuckled, presumably at his pathetic attempt to seduce her with his French, while Katara made a point to keep her face steady while she entered, flashcards still clutched in one hand.

Halfway into the cell, the girl she was going to represent in court came into view for the first time, and very quickly dropped her flashcards and her jaw.

Here she was: “Azula Inazuma”, according to the flashcards. “Born in December 2000, daughter of the late Ozai and Ursa Inazuma, accused of the murder of Ozai Inazuma in their home in November 2018.” She could recite those facts, those numbers, in her sleep, but suddenly they took meaning. “Born December 2000” – it was now September 2020, and this girl was 19. Compared to Katara’s own 25 years as of last July, she was a child. And here she was, lying on the concrete floor handcuffed to her bed, clearly for Katara’s “safety”, her jumpsuit hanging off her paper-thin frame. Katara’s heart surged with pity – looking into those empty eyes, those teeth which she had bared as soon as the cell was unlocked and were still up, ready to ward off the predators all around her, how could it not? Then she snarled and growled at Katara, a horrible, wailing bark, and Katara thought of a story her father had told her. When he was younger and learning to hunt up in the tundra, on the shores of the Arctic ocean, he met an injured wolf-cub, abandoned by her mother probably several days ago. He had to choose whether to leave her to starve or be eaten by some other predator in the forest, or fire a mercy shot and give her the honour of a quick death. He always said that that day he faced his first and greatest test of what kind of man he was.

Katara knew how that story ended: he had dropped his shotgun, torn a strip from his shirt to bandage the immediate wounds, and carried the wolf back home and nursed her to health. It had taken many months and bitten fingers before she even trusted him to feed her, but soon enough she became his most beloved and loyal companion until he met Kya, Katara’s mother (who had loved the wolf as much as her father until she passed away, months before Katara’s older brother was born).

As Katara stared at this girl, observed all the stress lines and bitten fingernails and faded bruises on this girl who had been declared a threat to society and locked up to be forgotten about, she saw a wolf-cub lying amongst the [type of tree] trees. So Katara dropped her shotgun.

Stepping over her flashcards, she crouched down in front of Azula and, seeing fear in the girl’s eyes, slowly, cautiously reached out a hand to stroke her hair and whispered, “Shh, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” in a hushed voice like she had seen her father do with scared animals hundreds of times. She glanced behind her and shot a warning look at the two guards, then turned back to Azula. Without raising her voice or altering her tone, she told the girl, “I can’t speak for anyone else in this place, and quite frankly I wouldn’t believe myself if I did, but I swear on the honour of my ancestors that I am going to try and help you. These people, I can see how they see you. They look at you and see a wild, rabid beast, that someone ought to shoot to put it out of its misery.”

Azula looked up, and Katara saw that the fear had morphed into something else – curiosity, or anticipation. That was good. She was beginning to trust Katara. Emboldened, she continued, “I know how that feels, and I promise you, Azula, above all else: while I’m working with you on this case, while I’m working to protect you against these men, I will never, ever, treat you as anything less than human.”


	2. Maybe You Should Try People-Watching

The bench was uncomfortable, but moving now would look suspicious: there was nowhere else Zuko could see to sit except on the grass even more conspicuously close to the kid he was watching. It wasn’t worth it regardless, as the boy was easy enough to keep track of even from this far away. He was a fast little guy, running rings around his peers in whatever game of tag they were playing, probably on the way towards a football scholarship or a stint as a regional running champion; but his darker skin stood out like a sore thumb among all the white.

This was a disgustingly rich corner of a disgustingly rich neighbourhood, the kind of sight Zuko was very familiar with. It reminded him of his childhood home, his neighbourhood where his fair skin was one of the darkest in his class, and he didn’t even have the disadvantage of old clothes to single him out. He, of course, was given the very latest fashion with the most up-to-date brands to impress the fellow ten-year-olds; this boy was lucky, if you could call it that, to get the same experience.

Zuko knew for a fact that not a mile away there were two dozen homeless kids living in a church basement, many more of whom were black and Latino than you’d see lining the classrooms of the local private school, but this close to the high street their old coats and passed-down trainers “made tourists uncomfortable”, or whatever other bullshit excuse the HOA liked to trot out, and the pastor who looked after them was kindly encouraged to move his business southwards, closer to the rest of the riff-raff.

The child he was watching had escaped that cruel fate, he thought without mirth, instead being relocated to the house of a childless white woman who had oh so badly wanted kids, and had just begged the unscrupulous director of a care home with too many unaccounted-for children. There were dozens of people who had come to him for a request like this, and he hadn’t even checked whether there was family to take in the spare children before he gave them away. Now he’d been locked up on charges of over thirty counts of human trafficking, and Zuko’s private investigative business had the sorry task of searching for all the children the police couldn’t find.

This one was the son of a Salvadoran girl living in the church. She was a young mother, no older than Zuko himself, and given the size of this boy she couldn’t have been much older than fourteen when she had him. She’d come to Zuko and his partner pretty sure of where the boy was, and she swore she’d be able to recognise him and his “adoptive” mother on sight. So here Zuko was, watching this boy who might not even be stolen, and he’d already formed a pretty good guess at said mother’s identity himself. The woman along the wall who was closest to him in that weird little huddle rich mothers tended to make at playgrounds, had been giving him a suspicious side-eye for a while now. Of course, knowing these types of women, that alone wasn’t really evidence enough that she was the right mother, let alone that the boy was the right kid or even hers, so he tried to lead her eyes to notice his following the boy, and it seemed to work as her face became steadily more distrustful.

So he acted out a stretching, “I’ve been sitting too long, I need to walk off the cramps” kind of yawn, got up and approached her. Leaning against the wall just far enough along that only she could hear, he tried to strike up a conversation. “One of these kids yours?” he asked, going for nonchalant rather than creepy or overbearing.

“Yep, hence why I’m standing watching them all,” she replied with the barest hint of snark. “How about you? You look too young for a child.”

“Nope, I’m just waiting for my sister to be let out of school, but I get off class at a really inconvenient time. There’s no point going home because then I’d be late for my sister, which means I have twenty minutes to kill every afternoon, and I like to spend them people-watching in the park.”

“I’ve never seen you around here before,” she countered.

“Weird,” Zuko smirked, looking away so she couldn’t see. This interrogation would be easy. “I do this basically every day. Maybe you should try people-watching. It really helps you notice the folks around you. Do you have a husband?”

“Are you coming onto me, young man?” she asked with a smile like she thought she had the upper hand in this conversation. “Because as it happens, yes, I am married.”

“No, not at all,” he said, keeping his tone nice and polite. “I was simply making conversation. May I ask his name?”

“How do you know he’s a he? I could have a wife, you know.” Again, that smile, and a bad case of moral-high-ground liberalism, Zuko thought to himself.

“Apart from the fact that you just told me, a couple reasons,” he explained, fighting to save the accusatory-ness until it was too late for her to get defensive. “Firstly, most lesbians I know who are out enough to reveal being married, won’t beat around the bush. They’ll just say, ‘No, I have a wife.’” He slowed down, knowing he had to choose his next words carefully. “Secondly, if your marriage is so unsatisfactory that you have to warn a twenty-two year old stranger with an ugly scar across his face not to tempt you into cheating, I’m willing to bet you’re heterosexual.”

Her face contorted in shock as she tried to think of a reply, but Zuko had done his job well and he could see her struggle for a way to escape from the corner he had backed her into, with little success. Fuming, she let him win that round and gave up trying to respond. She reluctantly answered, “Jeremy Howell. He’s an advertising manager for a couple of local companies. You might have seen the advertising campaign he did for the new P-Hop CEO, to promote Zhao, the old Vice President.”

Ugh, Zuko thought immediately. Of course this random woman’s husband worked for Phoenix Oil and Petroleum; sometimes it felt like half the state of Maine was related to the company somehow.

“I suppose you heard what happened to the CEO,” she said, and Zuko hid a look of disbelief. Was she really making small talk to him about this? Was the scar not obvious enough for her?

“Yes, I know the story. My father was involved in the company so I followed the news.”

“Oh really?” she asked. “Maybe he might have known my Jeremy!” Zuko somehow doubted that. “What department did he work in?”

“Oh, it was some managerial position,” he said dismissively. “I don’t remember exactly what, though – he stopped working there a couple of years ago.”

“What does he do now?” Jesus, he thought, will this woman ever stop asking questions?

“Not much,” he muttered.

This seemed to put a stop to that line of conversation. “Well, anyway, it truly was tragic. Mr Inazuma was such a good businessman, and a nice man too,” she said. Zuko vaguely nodded and made a noncommittal “mmm” sound. She continued, “You know they’re prosecuting the daughter. Apparently she went psycho or something and did him in. I think she deserves it. Crazy people like that, they deserve to be locked up for public health. You know what I mean?”

“Oh yeah, I think I heard something like that,” Zuko replied quickly. He wanted the conversation to move on. She was getting dangerously close to the immanently-punchable zone, and, as much as he’d take immense pleasure in laying her out flat, he had a job to do.

Thankfully she finally decided to change the subject, and asked, “So, you said you’re people watching. Is there a reason you were so fixated on watching my son in particular?”

Well, here we go, Zuko thought grimly. Show time. “I don’t know that I was watching any child in particular, I was just trying to get a general feel for how the kids are all interacting. Which one is your kid, then?”

She pointed at the boy he’d been following all day – perfect. “Your husband, I suppose he’s Hispanic? Jeremy Howell – not a very Spanish-sounding name.”

“Oh no, he’s white, like me. Our Fernando is adopted. And the little one, he’s only Spanish by blood. We adopted him far too young for him to learn his parents’ language, I should hope.”

“Noted,” he muttered. “Hey, seeing as you’re so interested in local news, I thought I’d mention: I’ve been reading about this orphanage up in Bangor that they recently discovered has been giving away children to anyone who asks for one. Without checking for blood relatives or anything. The director’s getting forty years for human trafficking, I heard.” He smiled thinly as he saw the woman’s face become noticeably paler. “You ever been to Bangor? I’ve gone a couple times, for my dad’s job.”

She nodded and said she had been once or twice as a kid. Zuko carried on, “That orphanage thing is fascinating. Apparently the children he trafficked came from all over the state. Probably some from right here – you know the church down on Maine Street? There’s a lot of young mothers down there, especially from poor families of colour, and apparently they’re the main targets of trafficking from within the care system like this.”

Zuko’s intuition was paying off massively – this woman was really not good at hiding her guilt. She must have thought a quick fee off the books to a man two cities away would be all she needed to obtain an exotic new son to show off to her friends at brunch. Alas, that was why Zuko was here. She was silent, her lips pursed, and Zuko decided it was time to go in for the kill. “You said you and your son didn’t know Spanish, right?” She agreed, looking confused. He turned towards the playground and said, loud enough for the kids to hear, “Si puedes oír lo que estoy diciendo, tengo helados muy deliciosos para ti. Chocolate, fresa o vainilla.”

Most of the children looked briefly over at the strange man saying something they couldn’t understand, but quickly turned their attention back to whatever they had just been doing. The only exception was Fernando, who looked over and saw his “mother” sitting next to the voice. He happily waddled over, and said in a sweet voice, “Fresa, por favor.”

His “mother” tried to feign surprise, and asked, “Wherever did you learn that?” Zuko shook his head, his meaning implicit: “Give up already, you’ve been caught.”

Fernando cheerfully said, “From my old mommy! Before she had to leave me and you found me instead.”

It was almost too easy, Zuko thought as he brought out the pair of handcuffs he liked to keep on him. As he shackled the woman, who was now mostly resigned to her fate and was acting passively cooperative, he whispered into her ear, “I’m not a cop, and this isn’t a formal arrest, although I will be taking you straight to the cops. But rest assured, if I was able to find you from only a boy’s skin colour and a neighbourhood, I’ll be able to find you again now that I know your face, your husband’s name and his place of work.” She quietly swore, and Zuko was able to lock the last cuff in place and begin to lead her along with barely a kick in resistance.

Turning back to Fernando, he said, “Fernando, your new mommy has been bad. She shouldn’t have taken you away from your real mommy, and we’ll be taking you back to her and giving you all the support you need to have a really good life. We’ll take care of your fake mommy so she won’t be able to be bad to any other kids in the future, okay?” He seemed to understand, at least as much as a four-year-old can, and Zuko added as an afterthought, “Y obtendrás su helado pronto, yo te lo prometo.”

Satisfied that Fernando was placated, Zuko went back to the handcuffed woman. When they reached his car, he shoved her into the backseat, and strapped Fernando to the child’s seat his real mother had requested Zuko bring. Settling into the wheel, he phoned his partner.

“Zuko?” he heard on the second ring. “What’s up?”

“Miss Beifong,” he replied.

“Zuko, seriously,” the girl on the other line replied, “if you insist on not just calling me Toph I’m gonna quit and find a new aide. How’re you doing with… you know what?”

“I’m… ahem… with our client at the moment,” he said, coughing politely.

“Oh, you mean you’ve caught the bitch already? Damn, I was hoping I could be there to sleuth her out my way,” Toph joked. Zuko rolled his eyes. “You need anything?”

“Just for you to be at the station in ten minutes with a chocolate ice cream,” he requested. He imagined her raising her eyebrow.

“Strawberry ice cream!” yelled Fernando from somewhere to his left. He corrected himself to Toph.

“Do I wanna ask why?”

“I had to bait the kid with a promise of ice cream in Spanish,” he whispered into the phone.

“Ohhhhhhh,” she exhaled on the other side, making no such considerations for volume. “I get it. Clever. Okay, I’ll try to be there in ten, but I’ll have to use my stick so I might be a bit late.”

“Mhm, sounds good,” he said. He had missed the last few seconds of what Toph said – he was thinking about Phoenix Oil and Petroleum. That goddamn company seemed to follow him wherever he went, no matter what he did. He supposed he could move out of state, but he didn’t want to uproot Toph’s life on top of his own – or Iroh’s, for that matter. There was too much here for him, even if one of those things was the horribly nicknamed P-Hop.

Toph could apparently tell – Toph could always tell – he was distracted, and with a loud clear of her throat said, “Zuko, you alright? You spaced out there for a bit.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck until he remembered that Toph couldn’t see him. “It’s just, the woman who adopted Fernando, her husband works for —”

“P-Hop,” Toph finished his sentence sombrely. “Look, I get it. It feels like it’s chasing after you. A legacy like that’s a hard thing to get rid of. But someday you’re gonna have to move past it, and let it move past you.”

“Jesus, Toph, you’re starting to sound like Uncle Iroh,” Zuko laughed.

“Don’t deflect from this, boy,” she said in a mock stern tone, then immediately broke character and joined in with Zuko’s laughter. “Seriously though, I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

Zuko nodded, hung up and started driving to the station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> atm it looks like i'm going by a two week upload schedule. let's see if that lasts more than a couple of chapters lol


	3. Fun And Casual Mention Of Murder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiiiiiii everyone sorry for being sooooo late with this uwu,,, i've had loads of work to do with my gcses coming in the next few months so i've not been able to find too much time to write. i have got a 4k-ish word bubbline fic on the go bc i got into that recently :3 so that'll be coming soon, but i found inspiration a few days ago to finish the third chapter of this so here you go uwu. ummmm don't take this to mean i'm gonna be posting more frequently again uwu, i'll probably have another long break and won't really be able to pick up the pace until july-ish when exams are over.

Laying on her bed with only a towel draped over her chest in case anyone came in, and another one underneath her hair so it didn’t get her pillow wet while she waited for it to get dry enough to properly braid, really wasn’t the picture of professionalism one would expect a girl to have while she was leafing through possibly some of the most important paperwork anyone in the world was doing right now, but somewhere around the fifty-fifth hour of consecutive awakeness (was that a word?) Katara had given up caring; and her somewhat confused brain had decided that carefully holding the papers above her head while she dried slightly beat out taking them into the shower as the best way to freshen up _and_ do half an hour of paperwork in thirty-five minutes. So, here she was, shakily writing figures in a way that was sure to cramp her hand, and trying to resist the urge to just write in whatever nonsense she could scribble fastest. Bumi wouldn’t even care, probably. He’d probably be meditating on top of his desk in only a pair of too-tight yoga pants. While smoking pot.

But Katara, alas, was far too neurotic to slip up on the quality of her paperwork. Besides, she had been scrawling so fast and so messily – it was fine, she’d still be able to read it later, even if no one else would – that she’d have nearly 10 minutes more than she’d expected. Hooray to not having to tie her signature braids from within a taxi.

When at last she reached the last piece of paper in her stack, she shook her head in celebration – which probably had the nice bonus effect of helping to speed up the drying of her hair – only to quickly retract that sentiment as she saw what she had written down under the title “Inazuma case” and underlined with today’s date: “Meeting with psychiatrist, 14:25”.

She _hated_ the psychiatrist. The psychiatric institution in general, but also just that guy. Not only was he symbolic of all the worst things about the American healthcare industry and Reaganite demonisation of mental illness and yada yada; he was also just a fucking asshole. She had never met anyone with more confidence in his own irresistible charm, and yet who had so little. For one thing, she couldn’t truthfully say before the Lord that she was sure he knew how to wash – he always had some weird smell on which she could never quite put her finger – and for another, he had the most wonderful little habit of smoking very loudly and distractingly, and then exhaling out the smoke _this_ close to his neighbour’s face.

But whatever, he’d be useful for the Inazuma case. It was pretty much a no-brainer anyway – this would be pretty easy to plead insanity; she was blacked out under the influence of alcohol her father had manipulated her into drinking, woke up to see a dead body and immediately sunk into a catatonic shock for the next eight or so hours. Hardly “in full possession of her mental faculties” or whatever the phrase was.

Alright, it was time to just get this over with. When she reached the office and slunk unnoticed into her cubicle, Katara dialled the number into her phone that she had scribbled in one of the various other papers she had been discarding on the floor behind her bed and had quickly rummaged to find before she left, and someone on the other side picked up on the second ring. “Lonsdale and Portobello General Practitioner’s and Psychiatrist’s Office, how may I help you?” said a girl’s voice which was far too perky for Katara to deal with on no sleep.

“Put me through to Dr. Portobello,” Katara requested, vividly able to hear her own exhaustion as she spoke. “Tell him I have an appointment for this afternoon to discuss the Inazuma murder case.”

The receptionist let out a cute little gasp – clearly caught off-guard by the fun and casual mention of murder – and stuttered, “Uh, y-yeah, I’ll just call him through.” Katara heard some muffled noises from away from the phone, and then after a pause the girl’s voice cut back in, “I’m just gonna pass you over now.”

Katara offered a quick, “Thank you,” before Dr. Portobello’s gravelly voice replaced the perky girl’s. “You’re calling about the Inazuma case? Am I supposed to be involved with that?” he asked, and Katara allowed herself to narrow her eyes for a second.

“Yes, and in fact we met on Friday so I could give you the briefing information,” she responded curtly. After a pause in which he was clearly scrambling to remember her, Katara rolled her eyes and continued, “Katara. You blew smoke in my face so I snapped your cigarette in half, if you remember.”

“Ah, yes, of course. Delighted to meet you, I’m sure,” Portobello responded drily, the gravel having been smoothed out of his voice remarkably quickly. It was much more mellow, and bearable to listen to, now. “What time are we meeting?”

“I have it down as 14:25,” Katara said, looking briefly down at the page in front of her to check that number.

“Ooh,” he winced, “that doesn’t work super well for me. Could we maybe push it back to three o’clock or so?”

“Uh, sure,” Katara said, uncertainty sneaking into her tone. “Um, at my office, I assume?”

“I’d really rather not spend all my free time in a stuffy office like that. How about that new restaurant up by the river? The Jade Dragon, or something?”

Ugh, fine. Pushy, much? “Sure, that… won’t be too much trouble.” Only a nearly forty minute walk and god knows how much grovelling to her superiors, Katara thought grimly. “Um, let me just write that down. The, uh, Jasmine, I think it’s called, the Jasmine Dragon, at – did you say three?” She didn’t bother writing it down – she just wanted an excuse to correct him about the name, even if he wouldn’t really notice the affront.

“Actually, we’d be better off making it an even three thirty,” he decided. _“We”? You maybe_ , she thought. _Also in what world is three thirty more “even” than three?_ She really didn’t like this guy.

“Sure, I’ll see you there,” she said and cut off the call before he could raise her blood pressure any higher.

Okay, so she now had nothing to do for the next few hours except try and convince her boss to let her go mid-working day, which oughtn’t take more than a few minutes, humiliating as those few minutes would be. She sat around pretending to do paperwork for half an hour, made herself a few cups of coffee and wasted time until lunch. Then, after a rare opportunity to go down to the nice chilli place around the corner during her lunch break, she went up to her boss’s room and prepared to beg.

However, it seemed Bumi was standing in today instead of the various intermediaries between her and her former mentor in the corporate chain. He greeted her at the door in an absurd pose and she let herself in, sitting on the boss’s chair while Bumi perched on a plant pot. “You’re meeting with the psychiatrist today, and he’s asked to do it somewhere ridiculous like a restaurant so you’re about to ask me permission to get off work early,” he asserted. Not as a question, not with any hint of expectation. Just a simple, weirdly observant assertion of fact, as was Bumi’s signature style. It was one of the things that had endeared him to her at first: he cared so little about validation from others that he wouldn’t even phrase things as questions, he’d just assume he was right and let corrections come if they were going to come. He never asked for them, never allowed anyone to start off with the assumption that he was wrong.

Katara nodded, and Bumi said, “Well have fun then!”

“No catch?” she ventured cautiously. Not that she was expecting one – Bumi was transparent about his favouritism, and he had always liked her – but she found it was usually worth asking.

“Nope. But also,” he said, just as a word of thanks had formed on her lips and she was getting ready to leave, “How long since you last slept?”

Katara had to stop and think about that. “Uh, probably since I woke up Friday. So, at least seventy-two hours.”

Bumi nodded sombrely, then said in a slow, serious voice, “As I expected. Next time you’re wasting two hours and you’re that tired, just have a nap.”

Katara snickered slightly, replied, “Yes sir,” and headed back towards her desk to pick up her coat and the relevant papers. Bumi waved her out as she headed out of the door, turning up her collar against the slight chill in the air.

By the end of the frustratingly long walk to the restaurant, that slight chill had built up somewhat, and she was very grateful for the rush of warmth that hit her as she entered the heated building. She had given herself time enough that Portobello shouldn’t be here yet, making the somewhat doubtful assumption that he would be on time, so she was free to choose her own seat. She did so in a booth in the corner, furthest away from the chill and with a comfortable amount of room to stretch her legs while she waited for either Portobello or the waitress to arrive. She rather hoped it would be the latter first.

The waitress, as far as Katara knew, was the only employee apart from two cooks and the owner, who made the signature tea which was the main attraction of the restaurant. It was described as a family business, so Katara assumed that the waitress was a daughter or a granddaughter of the owner. She was a young and quite pretty brunette, and the last two or three times Katara had eaten (or drank, considering the tea) here, she was the only visible employee and certainly seemed to be the face of the restaurant.

However, it was neither of those two people who came to shock her out of her reverie. Instead it was a much older man, whose hair was bordering between grey and white, and who looked to have had a long life full of much delicious food – though the speed with which he came over to Katara’s table indicated a surprising spryness for either his age or his size. Was this the owner? Katara didn’t think he ever left the kitchen.

He greeted her with a hearty hand out ready to shake, which Katara cautiously took. “Good afternoon,” he said cheerily, “and welcome to the Jasmine Dragon!” His grip as he shook her hand was strong. “My name is I-Mushi. Yes, my name is Mushi. That’s my name,” he continued, speaking as though almost to himself.

Katara let out a shaky breath, which she attributed to the latent cold from outside, and returned his handshake with more vigour. “Are you the owner?” she asked politely.

Mushi confirmed that he was, and added, “But I like to wait tables as often as I have energy for it. I believe it keeps me humble.”

“Well, your tea is excellent,” she said brightly, and he beamed in response. “And I shouldn’t doubt the quality of your service for a second either,” she added.

“In that case, may I offer you some of my tea?” he asked, shifting impressively smoothly into salesman-mode. “I recommend the ginseng: the batch I brewed this morning will rejuvenate you nicely after a cold day like this.” She nodded her assent – that did sound wonderful – and he went off to pour her a cup, promising to be back to take her order later on.

While Katara idly waited for Mushi to return with her tea, Dr. Portobello finally arrived. She glanced at her phone – 3:34. Not bad, she thought amusedly to herself. He spotted her in the cubicle and waddled over. Katara noticed that his collar was turned up and his buttons were done up all the way to the top of his coat, so he had evidently fared the bad weather too. He had barely settled in opposite – following an icy stare on Katara’s part when he tried to slink into her side of the cubicle – when Mushi came back, clutching a gratifyingly hot-looking mug. He placed it down in front of Katara with a warning about the temperature, then turned to her companion and asked whether he would like a drink as well.

“I’ll have a coffee,” Portobello said without even looking up at Mushi. Katara watched as the old man’s face grew red in indignation, and she stifled a giggle.

“You know this is a tea shop, right? If you want a hot drink, you’re supposed to get the _tea_ ,” she advised him. She didn’t really care about this debate, though she knew tea drinkers tended, ironically or not, to scorn on coffee, and vice versa. However, she liked Mushi, and today she was feeling vindictive enough – and confident enough of Portobello’s reaction– that she felt like stirring (pardon the pun) the issue a little more for the sake of some light entertainment.

Sure enough, Portobello responded, still without recognition of the kindly waiter about to serve him the detested drink, “Eh, it’s still a hot drink, it’s still made with leaves or beans or whatever. It’s all the same to me.” Then, finally looking up at the now positively incensed Mushi yet seeming not to notice his expression, he clarified, “Oh, and by the way I’d like that with two sugars and one milk, and a shot of whipped cream if you h—”

He was interrupted by the whooshing of air as Mushi abruptly turned and walked away, leaving only the commandment, “You get black!”

Katara elected to hide her now full-on grin by taking a sip of the – totally delicious, and just as piping hot as she needed on a day like today – ginseng in front of her, and eyed Portobello as he muttered, “What the hell was that about?” to himself.

When he turned to her, she took another longer sip, then got her papers out of her bag to consult and cleared her throat, “Ahem. Now that our drinks are both – well, coming, I guess, we should finally start discussing the Inazuma case. I don’t know if you’ve read the —”

“I haven’t.”

“— well, okay then. So, we’re going to plead insanity.” The psychiatrist nodded. Unsurprising, seeing as he had reason to get involved in the first place. “According to my client’s testimony, she was drinking alcohol which most likely came from her father, and passed out sometime around 10pm, while her dad was alive. She doesn’t remember anything between then and when she estimates to be much later at night, as late as 3 or 4am, driving downtown. She mentioned seeing Ursa Major to her – I don’t remember which direction but I looked it up and it meant she would have been heading southwards. Her father’s been dead a few hours by this point. She doesn’t think she fell asleep at the wheel, but her memory gets much hazier after that, she doesn’t remember where she was heading or whether she arrived. Neighbours mentioned hearing the door open at about five thirty, so it’s probable she arrived home around then, passed out and then woke up when the police responded to the neighbour who found his body.”

“When was that?”

“Eleven in the morning or so. It was an elderly neighbour who noticed him missing from church and went to check on him, found the door unlocked and saw him in the front room.”

“Where was the daughter?”

“Asleep on the sofa opposite. The neighbour woke her up when he came into the room and she apparently screamed for a few minutes then fell into a catatonic state for the rest of the day. That’s where her friend found her on Sunday evening.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty insanity defence-able to me,” the doctor said when she was finished. “So, what diagnosis are you suggesting?”

“Um, dissociation, mainly. Plus the influence of alcohol, and no reason not to assume other substances supplied by the father.”

The doctor gave a small nod which she took to mean he was impressed, and said, “I’d testify to that for sure. This seems incredibly well-researched.”

“Well,” Katara said with a chuckle, “I suppose it’s good to know my psych degree hasn’t been wasted.”

She was less pleased with the eyebrow he raised in response. “I thought you were a lawyer,” he said, his eyes narrowed, and glanced briefly at his watch.

Because she really didn’t have the energy to make a scene in this nice restaurant and risk hurting a lovely old man’s business by disturbing the other patrons, all Katara did was scoff, take another long drink of her tea and say, “A girl can’t do both?”

Before Portobello, who looked mildly offended at Katara’s impertinence, could say anything, Mushi came back, holding out a plastic cup of plain black coffee with a little curly straw, which he swiftly deposited in front of the doctor. Portobello peered confusedly at it, and Mushi grinned, staring at him and presumably waiting for him to taste it. When he did so, he immediately spat it out and, grimacing, asked, “What the hell is this shit?”

Mushi had a look on his face that told Katara that he had been hoping for Portobello to say exactly that, and, barely holding back a snicker, replied, “It is hot water, made with beans, so it is all the same to you.”

Katara smiled warmly at the old man, while the doctor grumbled and said, “Well there’s no way I’m going to sit here and ingest this... hot bean water. Drop the relevant papers by my office, Miss – sorry, I forget...”

“Katara, sir. And no, you can take them now. Have the whole folder – here you go, it’s the first ten pages after the yellow divider, the quotes are sourced and annotated and I can have a copy of the interviews emailed to you tonight. Toodle-oo!” she said with a fake smile and a wave of her hand, masking the glare she had borne while she was talking. With barely a glance back at her and Mushi, Portobello dropped a few coins on the table, tucked the folder in his coat and walked out.

After quickly gulping down the last of her ginseng, Katara fished her purse out of her pocket and made to pay and get out of Mushi’s hair, but the old man gently put his hand on her wrist and motioned to her to sit back down. “Katara, dear,” he began, looking wistfully towards the stairs in the corner of the establishment – when Katara followed his gaze it looked to be an old picture of two children, who looked close enough in age to be twins but appeared to be a boy and a girl, playing at a duck pond with an older boy. “Forgive me for eavesdropping on your conversation, but I heard enough to know that you are working on the case for the death of Ozai Inazuma, is that not right?”

Katara nodded uncertainly. He continued, his tone sombre, “His daughter... do you believe she is innocent?”

This time Katara nodded more certainly, and followed it up with, “Yes, I do.”

Mushi bowed his head. “So do I.” After a moment, he said, “I want to help you. Here is the card of my nephew and his partner – he is a private investigator, and if you tell him Mushi asked him to take on a case I am sure he will be willing. He is very good.”

Katara thanked him and took the card, slipping it into her sleeve to look at outside. Glancing back at the photograph, she thought to herself. Was the nephew the older boy? She would assume so, considering how he spoke about him. That photo looked at least a few decades old, she was sure, which would make the boy in his early thirties, at least, if not older. And the card looked official enough; she would do some research, obviously, but she saw no reason not to take the offer now that she had it.

While she was thinking, Mushi had left and come back with a tray, and he took her cup from her, as well as Portobello’s nearly full mug of coffee. Thanking him again, she took out a ten-dollar bill, more than enough to cover the cost of her tea with an extra few dollars left over for a sizeable tip, and put it in Mushi’s hands despite his protests. He tried to give her a few dollar bills from the cash register, but she refused, and left before he could reduce her tip a second time.

As she stepped out of the restaurant, she turned up her collar towards the wind, which had picked up again in the time she’d been inside. Trying to make it to a taxi before she caught hypothermia, Katara didn’t think about Mushi’s nephew’s investigative team until she was back at home, and even then it was pushed to the back of her mind for the next few hours by paperwork and the need to scrounge something up to eat out of her nearly empty fridge.

In fact it didn’t cross her mind again that day at all. It wasn’t until the next morning that she decided it would be worth giving the number on the card a call. 


End file.
